Blood Talons

Since I haven't seen anyone complain about this yet I thought I'd make a thread about it.

Just hammered the Blood Talons upgrade that Death Company and Furioso dreadnoughts have access to in the new codex Blood Angels, with quite amusing results.

First, what are Blood Talons?
Blood Talons are essentially dreadnought lightning claws that allows you to immidieately make another attack for every unsaved wound you cause. Those additional attacks can generate yet more attacks and so on. Wow!

Combined with the fact that both types of dreadnoughts have a fairly high amount of attacks this means that they'll generate a high amount of wounds which again means a high amount of extra attacks.

Next- let's take a look at the dreadnoughts.
The Furioso stands apart from being a normal dreadnought mainly in three ways.
1.They have a Captain like weapon skill.
2.They have an increased front armor (being one higher than the standard dread).
3.They dont have a ranged weapon, instead being equipped with two close combat weapons (giving them an additional attack).
It should also be noted that they have a one in six chance of getting furious charge in each game (one in two with Astorath).

The Death Company versions are even more radical departures from the John Doe Dreadnoughts.
1.They too have increased weapon skill, although not as high as the Furiosos.
2.They have an extra base attack and still have their two close combat weapons (so two more attacks).
3.They always have the following three USRs: Furious Charge, Fleet and Rage.
4.They have their own special rule granting them immunity to being shaken aswell as stunned.

Both are equipped with a meltagun, a stormbolter and two Blood Claws (DCCWs). The DCCWs can however for free be changed to a pair of Blood Talons.

So what does this give us?
Well for starters a Death Company Dreadnought wont need much luck to completely eradicate a 10-man strong Plague Marine squad on the charge. Now obviously plague marines would be a prime target, but the fact is that it will do around nine wounds on the charge on anything without an invulnerable save and with a toughness lower than or equal to five and a weapon skill of lower than or equal 4 and mind you that all this happens before most enemies will even get to retaliate.

I have made the following table that shows the average amount of kills the dreads will do, both on the charge and on subsequent turns of close combat, against a variety of generic enemies (all without invulnerable saves).

This means that one of those dreads can crash into an enemy squad leaving 2~3 models left to slaughter in the enemys assault phase and then move on for yet another crash in the controlling players turn. Fun fun

At the current time I'm incapable of saying which version is the better one, have only been hammering them. They both do pretty much the same thing with only slight differences.
The Death Company versions have fleet and stun-immunity so will get to the enemy faster, once they are deployed though the controlling player has very little control of them other than what to shoot at and what to charge.
The Furioso retains most of their sanity, are tougher to kill especially in close combat, but with less attacks to fuel the whirlwind.

Both entombed maniacs can take droppods or ride in the fabled Stormraven to close in with the enemy even faster.

Okay all this sounds terrible.. So here's the section as to why the skies are not falling.
The Blood Talons will only generate extra attacks while the dreadnought is equipped with two of them. The first weapon destroyed result and that's the end of the whirlwind.

Death Company Dreadnought have rage. Which means that it's effectively the enemy that decides where they move. Feed them more or less useless units preferably vehicles that the talons will not work well against. (They do -not- double strength and wont generate extra attacks). TH/SS termies for the marine players, the invulnerable save quickly stops the amount of attacks generated.

Death Company Dreadnoughts are troop choices and require the BA player to take 5 Death Company members before fielding (yet another enraged troop choice that can't score). This means that if you see 2-3 of them the enemy will most likely be low on scoring units.

Turned out there was alot I wanted to include so might aswell expand it to a Tactica: BA-Dreadnoughts later on.. Haha..
But for let's have a discussion about opinions, experiences, uses, counters, the health plan, boars, etc.

It honestly doesn't sound terrible, unless it gets into hth with one of my marine squads. Even then the Dread will kill enough of them as to where I'll fail my moral test and run, leaving it open for Melta Dakka!

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Yeah, these things can really mess up a lot. A reg dread naught with CCW will kill any regular tac squad, of course, but these things will kill them _quickly_. Quicker than Power fist can save you.

This seems balanced by the by the fact they'll be relatively useless against AV (still hitting back armor, mostly). Certainly a reg dread will scrap them. But can you do one blood claw and one CCW? If you can, even if you lose an attack, that seems like a problem.

Yeah you have to take the pair if you can, no swapping just one out and leaving a blood fist and blood claw on a dread. But give it the magna-grapple and suddenly it can take out tanks as well.

And yeah that's the problem I've seen...either killing too much with it or not killing enough. Killing to little doesn't make it effective, and killing too much has it sit out in the open where it gets shot to hell, and this coupled with no Venerable Rule is just a deathwish for a dread in the open. Either way it's nasty, especially tooled up to kill infantry and mech...

Last edited by SirBludgen; March 24th, 2010 at 07:51.

I serve my master and do as he wants. He wants the badlands, thus they will be his.
-Shriva the Damned

I may experiment with them but likely won't be taking any since it leaves them open to Monstrous Creatures and other walkers, who they would normally have an advantage against. Plus, no instant death - the main reason I like dreadnoughts is that they're one of the few things in the Marine codex that can instant-kill a Warboss.

It really depends on how adequate the magna-grapple/meltagun combo is for killing tanks out of melee. If it's reliable, I'll consider blood talons. I'm glad to see an anti-horde configuration for a Dreadnought. They've always been susceptible to masses.

But can you do one blood claw and one CCW? If you can, even if you lose an attack, that seems like a problem.

The OP said that this removes the attacks generation, effectively arming you with an I4 lightning claw and an I4 power fist.

The above poster = Totally a member of the Fluff Masters Clan. Click here for fluff pwnage.

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The Magna Grapple is str8 AP2 with a 12" range so it's not the greatest thing in the world. Handy but not amazing.

Blood talons are indeed nasty but I don't think i'll be going for them. My lists have no problem dealing with Infantry at Close Range, Orks, Guants even Marines will get taken apart in close combat by Assault squads and nasty things like Baal Preds with Flame Storm Cannons.
What i need a Dread to do in my army is knock out the big stuff like carnifexes, Tyrants, Daemon Princes and Land Raiders. At str6 they wont be doing that, well not reliably anyway.